K. Snyder

Biography

Veteran writer and new director, K. Snyder is on the move.

Fifteen plus years in Hollywood working in almost every creative discipline from Musician to TV Writer to Standup Comic and working closely with a who's who list that includes Quincy Jones, Will Smith, Keenen Ivory Wayans, and Oscar winner, Jamie Foxx to name a few have prepared him to add the director's hat to his established writing talents.

The brief story goes this way. Kenny hails from beautiful Hampton, Virginia. The third child of Master Sgt. Read more... the then, Hampton Institute, Kenny grew up in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement, the shadows of Viet Nam and the grooves of Earth, Wind & Fire, George Clinton and others. Seeing his father experience overt racism in the workplace, and his older brother's battle scars from the race riots in the newly desegregated schools of Hampton had an impact on Young Kenny, both defiant and measured. Excelling in athletics and academics, Kenny was on the tennis team and the elite jazz band in High School and took these talents to Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1986, majoring in Theatre Arts. In 1988, Kenny, who by now was leading his own reggae/rock/soul band in addition to his studies and part time job, got a call from his cousin and fellow aspiring musician, Will Smith, asking him if Snyder wanted to go out on the road with him for a few dates after school let out. Snyder gladly accepted and got on the tour bus a few days later, and didn't get off. Kenny joined the "posse" of the budding rap group, "DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince" as assistant to Will, and manager, James Lassiter. This proved to be his gateway into the industry from the ground up, sweat and hustle, his myriad duties including creative and administrative tasks from "gopher" to organizing recording sessions to functioning as stage manager for tours in North America and Europe in the golden age of Hip Hop. Kenny still found time to produce his demos and make his own contacts in the industry and decided to take on Hollywood in summer of 1990 and moved there from Philadelphia. The rigors of the music industry proved challenging, and in the spring of 1992, Snyder was embroiled in a corporate conflict that stalled his musical ambitions indefinitely. As fate would have it, he applied his songwriters flair for words and his already strong and clever sense of humor when he accepted a position as a Writer's Trainee for the by now already hit sit-com, The Fresh Prince of Bel- Air (FPBA) where he again learned from the ground up how television is made, and more importantly, how it is done by participating in the weekly production of over 75 episodes from 1992 - 1994, and Co-Writing two produced episodes. He left FPBA in 1995 and began to work mostly free-lance writing, contributing in the pilot of an up and comer named Jamie Foxx and writing his first feature screenplay, Unfinished. He continued to hone his craft throughout the next ten years as a hired gun working as Pilot and Script Consultant on the Fox Sit-com, Between Brothers as well as donating his time to The New Leaders, a leading black civic and citizenship organization in Los Angeles. In 1997, Snyder took a staff position on The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show serving as Keenen-Ivory Wayans' Head Monologue Writer as well as writing and directing comedy sketches and edited tape comedy pieces for the show which ended in 1998. Snyder's position on the daily show crammed years of practical experience into a few short months and Kenny's directing aspirations began out of necessity. After a stint on BET's Comic View as Writer/Producer, Snyder again lent his talents to MTV's Lyricists Lounge Show in 1999-00 as a Segment Producer. After the end of that show Kenny opted to focus more on his film career and he wrote the hilarious feature comedy, Broz & Arrows as a vehicle to launch his feature film directorial career. He also wrote The Life He Chose starring Multi-platinum Rapper, "The Game" in the starring role, produced by Blackout Productions in 2005 and will be released in 2006. In 2005 after re-acquiring full rights to his comedy feature screenplay Broz and Arrows, Snyder is ready to take the helm of all of his projects and take his place beside the top Writer-Director-Storytellers in the business. Not a household name yet, but a future worthy of paying attention to now.